Fields, Ylleya.Princess Cupcake Jones and the Missing Tutu (published in 2013 by Belle Publishing, 5247 Wilson Mills Rd., Cleveland, OH 44143). If you lost something that was important to you, where is the first place that you would look for it? Princess Cupcake Jones prefers to wear her flouncy tutu more than anything else. One morning Cupcake wakes up and finds her tutu missing. And it just happens to be the same day that she is to have her portrait painted. The princess doesn’t want to wear the dress that her mother has chosen, so she dashes around to find her tutu. Is it under the table, in the kitchen, or in Daddy’s office. While looking, she finds many other lost items and cleans up her room, putting everything back in its proper place. But where is the tutu? Will she ever find it?

Author Ylleya Fields has two daughters and a son. When her older daughter was two, Ylleya was looking for books to read to her and was struck by the limited number of titles featuring African American characters. So she blended both of her daughter’s images and personalities together to create Cupcake Jones. As the Princess learns the importance of tidying up and putting things in their proper place, the rhyming text and illustrator Michael LaDuca’s beautiful pictures will help children to see the need of being neat and keeping their rooms clean. Parents will like that! As an additional bonus, they will also have fun finding the hidden word in every colorful illustration. Princess Cupcake Jones and the Missing Tutu is the first book in an intended series, so look for more adventures starring Cupcake Jones.